#edit:

I like Florence (as in the city, not the singer, although I love the singer too) and I love Vetinari, so every time my brain can make a connection between them, it does exactly that. So I want to talk about it obvsly

First of all, it's mostly agreed that the name is inspired by the Medici family that ruled in Florence for a long time. If you look into their history though, a lot of it will remind you more of the Lavishes. They were bankers, ruled mainly because they had the money to do it, and some of them weren't exactly... kind to the rest of their family.

However, some of them (Lorenzo de Medici I think is the most famous) were pretty smart, funded the art and sciences and are considered to be an example of skilled but mischievous leaders.

And since Discworld is mainly based on what people believe, it's a bit pointless to dig super deep, it's often the stereotype that gets used (and then challenged).

A theory of mine is that Pratchett did do the research though and intended to make Vetinari a bit more of an asshole but then he saw an opportunity to create a diva and used the dirt he didn't need for Vetinari on the Lavishes.

Anyway, there's one more "absolute leader keeping his throne by schemes" archetype material and that is The Prince, a book by Niccolo Machiavelli. (Even though he himself wasn't really a ruler and then used the book as (what I consider) a way to look like a bootlicker so they would let him return from exile. He wrote that "to understand the nature of princes one must be a man of the people, and to understand the people one must be a prince", but whether you want to believe it is up to you.)

I'll make a separate post about what reminded me of Vetinari in the book and what didn't (I have around 36 notes in the book that seemed somehow relevant to mention), but what is super interesting (to me at least) and why I wanted to make this post in the first place is how you can kind of spot in the earlier books that Pratchett's idea of Vetinari seems to be influenced by Lorenzo Medici and Machiavelli but then he decides he has better ideas. Like at one point he's just like "you know what? You could do with a way funnier personality than that".

And then sometimes you see it bleed out a little bit, like whenever Vetinari rants in front of Lipwig. When he says anything regarding manipulation or understanding people from the point of view of the leader, I hear that Medici in him and then Pratchett adds something of his own that makes both Machiavelli and Lorenzo look like amateurs who don't know what they're talking about. It's beautiful.

Plus the general description of Vetinari sort of keeps the Medici vibe up even in later books. "He's mean and scary and dangerous, but he can manage the entire bloody city, how cool is that?" And then in the actual scenes (yes I did make a post about this) we can see the silliness that Pratchett refused to leave behind. And I love PTerry for being so good at such combinations. I don't know if I'm describing it properly... It's like PTerry borrows a vibe that you as a reader can recognise but then he builds on it so much...

And then there's obviously details like the fashion, for example there's this iconic portrait of Lorenzo de Medici with a simple red robe that you can just imagine black and you have Vetinari's robe. (Idk how much tumblr will kill me if I post pictures that aren't mine, but it's not hard to google) But maybe this only shows that the fandom is influenced by the inspiration??? Because Vetinari's appearance is mainly a fanart based thing???

So yeah I think about this a lot and I also started to make headcanons. The main thing I can think of right now is that the patrician's palace to me is the Pitti palace (that was built by the Pitti family but caused bankruptcy and was bought by... Guess who... Yeah, the Medici). It just looks right. I remember standing there and being like "yup, this will do"

Anyway, I need to go to sleep